


Just a Dream

by VirginiasWolf



Category: Death in Paradise
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-27 04:12:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19783006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VirginiasWolf/pseuds/VirginiasWolf
Summary: Camille Bordey has a nightmare about Richard Poole's death. Luckily, it was only a dream.





	Just a Dream

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so there's a couple things about this fic that I think should be mentioned right off the bat (and a longer explanation that will come after the fic body text because I want some readers to just be able to read it as a sentimental Richard/Camille fic if they don't care about the other stuff.) Anyway, this is very much a Richard survives AU, but it's a bit different than most, specifically, his survival is through the exploitation of a loophole I discovered in another seemingly unrelated TV series which will be discussed more at the bottom. Although this is never directly implied in this fic, there are a few details that the particularly discerning reader might pass off as accidental inconsistencies on the writer's part, but are actually pretty purposeful. The other thing you should know is that Camille's nightmare does actually show the method in which Richard was killed off on the show, so be warned about that although the non-dream world Richard was only startled in the making of this fic.

_The lights of the apartment are dimmed and Camille flicks on a switch as she enters, continuing to flip through the mail until she comes to one of Richard's magazines. This one is National Geographic, which she is almost certain they don't have a subscription to, but nonetheless, it is familiar enough that she looks up to call out, "Richard! Your magazine arrived!"_

  
_That's when she sees him in his favorite chair. His face is deceptively calm, almost like he's only asleep, but blood is everywhere, seeming to still pulse and stream out of him anew as if it somehow knows that she is now looking. The only wound appears to be the icepick protruding from his chest; a wound which she already knows was fatal, but there's so much blood. Too much blood for a single person._

  
_She drops the mail as the sea of red laps at her ankles and without thinking she begins to wade through the still rising sea, wanting to be close to him. The moment she reaches the body she lays her head on his lap and begins to wail in deep guttural sobs before managing to get out one coherent phrase. "I'm sorry Richard, I should have been able to save you this time."_

  
_Then suddenly an unseen force pulls her away from him and all goes silent._  
-  
Inhuman sounding wails less than a foot from your face is perhaps the worst possible way to be awoken from pleasant dreams. So terrible that for the briefest of moments Richard Poole is too scared to even comprehend exactly what is happening. When his mind does finally clear, he sees Camille Bordey trapped in the spasms of a nightmare.

  
More than anything he wishes he could just wake her up and tell her that whatever she's seeing is only a dream, but something tells him that it would be unwise to be on the receiving end of her startle reflex. The least he could hope to expect would be a black eye, but startling her could even lead to a broken nose or jaw, neither of which sound desirable. Not to mention how utterly amusing Catherine would certainly find the cause of his injuries whenever he'd show up at the bar the next day with them. He'd hardly be able to live that down.

  
Still, he doesn't like seeing her like this. She looks unusually small and weak and now she's mumbling something involving his name and not being able to keep him safe, so he feels like even if his waking self isn't involved, he's somehow now at fault for hurting her. So instead of outright waking her up, he manages to carefully pull her still sleeping form up against him.

  
After a few seconds, the wailing gives way to quiet whimpering and eventually even this gives way to silence as he softly strokes her hair.

  
Even after everything they've been through together, including some extremely strange and illogical events, he still has trouble putting into words exactly how he feels about her and what she means to him, or at least he does when she's actually awake and able to hear him. Somehow, he fears that she'll just tell him he's being horrifically cheesy or worse yet claim that she doesn't feel as deeply about him as he does about her.

  
She can't ridicule him if she's still asleep though, and right now she's softly clutching at the hems of his pajamas, looking almost angel-faced in the moonlight that is filtering in through the window, so he decides to risk confessing something that her mumblings made him realize.

  
"You have saved me, Camille, by making me feel like I might actually be wanted somewhere."

  
A small smile appears on her lips and he realizes she isn't asleep at all as she lazily looks up at him. "You are an infuriatingly dense man Richard Poole. There is absolutely no might about it, you have always been wanted and damn anyone who has ever made you feel otherwise."

  
The quiet, yet forceful tone her voice suddenly takes makes him realize that this isn't an attempt to get him to stop being sentimental and let her go back to sleep. She fully means what she is saying to him.

  
However, he can see in her eyes that her own nightmares have managed to completely exhaust her, and now that the adrenaline has worn off, sleep feels welcome for him as well, so he decides to not press further about the praise she has just given him. Instead, he presses a gentle kiss to her forehead. Before he closes his eyes again, he decides to check again to make sure she is actually okay. "How are you feeling?"

  
Camille yawns and nestles herself closer to him before speaking. "I already know it was just a dream."

**Author's Note:**

> This is the part you can skip if you don't actually care about weird side stuff. I promise I won't judge if you do so considering the whole AU concept is very self-indulgent in a way (hence why I didn't want to just brand this a crossover fic unless people would actually be interested in Richard, Camille, and Catherine in this universe).  
> You may or may not know about the TV series The Librarians. Basically, an Indiana Jones/Warehouse 13 hybrid type show that utilizes magical artifacts. Another concept in The Librarians which is relevant to this particular fic is fictionals. Fictionals are characters from a book (or in this case TV show) who are summoned into the real world where they have their own free will outside of their source material. They also are usually aware of their source material. They are virtually immortal except for being able to be killed in whatever method they died by in their source material. I've even headcanoned that death also has to take place in the same location and with the same type of weapon if murdered, but that may or may not be true.  
> To put a long story short, because I love The Librarians and fell particularly hard for the fictional concept I started using it as a loophole for many of my fandoms when shit happened to my favorites. For the DiP part, some Richard Poole adoring magic user had used magic to summon Richard, Camille and Catherine into the real world (hence why Richard is worried how Catherine would react if he got injured but never mentions Dwayne or Fidel). I imagine this happened in what for the DiP universe would be in between Richard choosing to stay on the island and his murder. Because fictionals have access to their source material, Camille did the stupidest thing possible and watched the episode, which made her stop taking Richard for granted but also, of course, traumatized her a lot. Obviously, since Saint Marie is not a real place, it doesn't actually exist in the parallel universe? they're all in so they're all in a very different place. For the humor/extreme crossover element I imagined it's actually Portland, Oregon where the main characters of The Librarians reside and that Catherine ended up using white magic and her cooking skills to open a Carribean fusion brewpub type place which the no longer detective inspector and detective sergeant also kind of work at and which accidentally became the favorite meeting place of the rather clueless main characters of The Librarians who have never watched an episode of DiP and therefore have no clue they're in a fictional run restaurant. I'd be happy to write more/more in-depth fics in the AU/crossover verse if it was desired but I'm mainly floating the details right now to explain some potential fic inconsistencies.


End file.
